u/Original_Project5436

(I do audiobooks by the way. That is why it says listeners.)

(Spoilers for Halo: The Rubicon Protocol)

(I am not a Halo 4 Spartan Ops or Halo 5 guy so correct me if anything seems wrong.)

(Also rant incoming)

First of all, the concept makes sense. They wanted better soldiers, and Spartans had proved themselves so they went to mass production. Not just the spartan 3s who were basically very good cannon fodder, but full power supersoldiers.

However, Halo 4 and the associated material portrayed them very stupidly in my opinion. First of all, there was Fireteam Majestic. In the lore book Halo: Official Spartan Field Manual, Thorne and Grant were annotating it. It seemed like they were trying to be the "cool kids" who gave you all the secrets and gossip. It just seemed stupid to me. Spartan 4s just also kind of appeared out of nowhere in the hundreds and tried to seem cool in cutscenes while in gameplay of Halo 4 they just seemed like Average marines to me. They hadn't really earned the viewer's respect I feel like and were trying to seem like a force you thought of as cool, but you hadn't really seen them struggle or anything.

In Halo: The Rubicon Protocol (I read the audiobook and Scott Brick is a fantastic voice actor) they fought, bled, and sacrificed themselves for regular humans. The struggled, persevered, and overcame everything that they could. When they didn't overcome and someone else had to step in to save the day, like Browning did for Kovan, they fell horrible and do their damndest to right it. They were toyed with and did their best, and when it was hopeless, the fought to their last ounce of strength, and died, like Benita Stone did. They cooperate with their enemies when it is absolutely necessary like (my favorite) Horvath did. I feel like this book singlehandedly gave me a massive amount of respect for the S4s, more than any of the previous 343 Disney like bullcrap gave me. Kelly Gay is an amazing author and wrote the best 343 era Halo book I have read. (The Alpha Nine books were good too. Those also helped a bit.)

Halsey might be more impressive than her Spartans.

1. She is an extremely skilled and talented Genetic engineer

2. She is a surgeon

3. She is an engineer and researcher

4. She is a talented and skilled software engineer

5. She was working on her second doctoral Thesis at 15

6. She outsmarted a Smart Artificial Intelligence probably because she LEAD THE TEAM THAT MADE THEM

7. She is an excellent social engineer

8. She is the mother of Miranda Keyes

9. A classical music enthusiast

10. A whole lot of other things probably.